The present invention relates to an information delivery system and an information delivery method using positional information in which when an actual position of a user (to be referred to as a user current position hereinbelow) is in a limited space defined in the actual world (to be referred to as a delivery range hereinbelow), information beforehand related to the delivery range (to be referred to as positional relation information hereinbelow) is supplied to the user.
Due to recent wide spread of the Personal Handyphone System (PHS) and portable telephone terminals, it is possible for the user to communicate data via networks including the internet, for example, by e-mail at any position by using communication functions of a personal digital assistant. Also, the user can obtain positional information of his or her current position by use of a positional information acquiring function of the portable digital assistant, for example, by using the Global Positioning System (GPS). This leads to increasing spread of information providing systems operating on the basis of positional information, namely, information providing systems using the communication functions and the positional information acquiring function.
In the information providing system based on positional information, the user obtains positional information representing the current user position by the positional information acquiring function of the personal digital assistant and transmits the positional information to the information providing system by use of the communication function of the personal digital assistant. The information providing system then transmits positional relation information to the user, the information being associated with a delivery range including the current user position according to the received positional information. By use of the information providing system, it is possible for the user to easily obtain positional relation information corresponding to the current user position.
JP-A-2006-323790 describes a related art of the information providing system using positional information. According to the system, information retrieved on the basis of positional information items are classified into categories and then a rank is assigned to each of information items to provide the information items to the user in a descending order of the ranks. It is hence more likely that information items which the user desires are displayed with higher priority.